Mission: The NASA satellite is equipped with an advanced sensor that will provide researchers with the clearest picture to date of the amount of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere and in natural “sinks” such as plants or oceans. It also will measure the faint “glow” emitted by plants during photosynthesis, providing further information about the carbon cycle process.

CSU’s role: Researchers in the Department of Atmospheric Science and CIRA, the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, at CSU have helped develop the sophisticated algorithms that will crunch data collected by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite.

Did you know? OCO-2 is a near replica of a previous NASA mission to measure atmospheric CO2. A nearly-identical satellite, dubbed OCO, lifted off in February 2009. It crashed into the ocean 11 minutes later after the nose cone of the rocket carrying the satellite into orbit failed to separate as planned. CSU researchers also were involved in the original mission.

Global Precipitation MeasurementLaunch: February 2014

Mission: GPM is an international satellite mission that will provide new, sharper rain and snow observations from around the world every three hours.

CSU’s role: CIRA researchers have developed an algorithm that converts raw information collected by GPM and seven other orbiting satellites into the most accurate precipitation data available to date.

Did you know? CIRA director Christian Kummerow first proposed the GPM mission while working at NASA in the late 1990s.

National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory ProjectLaunch: October 2011

Mission: Five science instruments onboard NPP take observations relating to the Earth’s energy budget, mapping the ozone layer, and measuring properties of the Earth’s atmosphere, clouds, oceans, and land surface properties.

CSU’s role: Scientists Don Hillger and Stan Kidder are involved with calibration and validating the imagery from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite or VIIRS instrument, while Yoo-Jeong Noh, Dan Lindsey, and Steve Miller will validate measurements of cloud base heights. Additionally, CIRA scientists Miller and John Knaff will use the new low-light abilities of NPP to take a new look at tropical storms using moonlight, while other scientists will use NPP data to look at oceanic phenomena, and arctic observations.

CloudsatLaunch: April 2006

Mission: CloudSat was the first radar to look vertically at the characteristics of clouds, particularly water and ice content that could someday help scientists better predict weather patterns and climate changes. Researchers use the radar's data about cloud processes to better understand how clouds determine Earth's energy balance, thus increasing the accuracy of severe storm warnings, improving water resource management and developing more advanced radar technology.

In February, NASA sent up the international Global Precipitation Measurement satellite, which collects high resolution sharper rain and snow data from around the world.

Then in July, the federal agency launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, its first satellite dedicated to measuring the amount of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere and in natural “sinks” such as oceans and forests.

In both cases, CSU developed the complex algorithms that convert the raw data collected by the orbiting satellites into accurate information that can be used by researchers around the world.

“These are both very important scientific missions that will help scientists better understand what is happening in the atmosphere,” said Matt Rogers, a research scientist at CIRA. “Our teams don’t necessarily build the instruments or hardware for satellite missions – although there are researchers at CSU who do that. Our job is the science. We are collecting the data and extract important information from it with the mathematical algorithms we develop.”

CloudSat a “breakthrough”

CSU researchers have long partnered with the federal National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency on some of the agency’s weather satellites. (NOAA also sponsors CIRA).

But over the last decade, they’ve gained NASA’s attention for their research and techniques they have developed to study the Earth’s atmosphere and how natural and man-made factors – such as greenhouse gas emissions – are affecting our world.

A major breakthrough was CloudSat – the first radar to look vertically at the characteristics of clouds, particularly water and ice content. CSU proposed the mission and still collects and analyzes the data from the satellite, which launched in 2006.

“To my knowledge, CloudSat was on a scale we hadn’t really done before,” said Steve Miller, deputy director of CIRA. “It was a huge mission for us. Now that we have that experience and infrastructure, we are looking for our next Cloudsat mission.”